I don't really see a whole lot of the panic the headline promises, but what I do see is people finally moving to combat a long mentioned, relatively well understood, extremely important set of problems: the problems that surround the simultaneous need to encourage more young people to pursue science and engineering professions and for those young people to be better prepared and better utilized once they enter the workforce.

My colleagues on a National Research Council committee and I touched on these issues in a report entitled "Building a Better NASA Workforce: Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration." Now, I was definitely the rookie on that panel (my coworkers were very impressive and pleasant people), but one piece I made sure was included in the final report was the necessity of finding innovative ways to get students involved in interesting, hands-on missions wherein the students play critical lead roles, rather than minor parts. In my opinion, this is a great way to tackle both of those problems simultaneously: the existence of a cool, fun, student-lead project helps recruit interested students into STEM related disciplines, and the experience they earn from running the projects helps make the students more useful to the industry upon graduating.

This train of thought ended up being captured in 3 of the 6 recommendations included in that report:

Recommendation 4: Provide hands-on training opportunities for NASA workers. The committee recommends that NASA place a high priority on recruiting, training, and retaining skilled program and project managers and systems engineers and that it provide the hands-on training and development opportunities for younger and junior personnel required to establish and maintain the necessary capabilities in these disciplines. ...

Recommendation 5: Support university programs and provide hands-on opportunities at the college level. The committee recommends that NASA make workforce-related programs such as the Graduate Student Researchers Program and co-op programs a high priority within its education budget. NASA should also invest in the future workforce by partnering with universities to provide hands on experiences for students and opportunities for fundamental scientific and engineering researchspecific to NASA’s needs. These experiences should include significant numbers of opportunities to participate in all aspects of suborbital and Explorer-class flight programs and in research fellowships and co-op student assignments. ...

Recommendation 6: Support involvement in suborbital programs and nontraditional approaches to developing skills. The committee recommends that NASA increase its investment in proven programs such as sounding rocket launches, aircraft-based research, and high-altitude balloon campaigns, which provide ample opportunities for hands-on flight development experience at a relatively low cost of failure. ... In addition, NASA should take advantage of nontraditional institutions and approaches both to inspire and to train potential future employees. Investment in programs such as Centennial Challenge prizes and other innovative methods has the potential to pay benefits many times greater than their cost, by simultaneously increasing NASA’s public visibility, training a new generation of workers, and pushing the technology envelope.

I think programs like the American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO) and the European SMO are fantastic implementations of these recommendations (and similar recommendations from other groups, et cetera), worthy of support from industry as a whole.

I'm going to do everything I can to avoid the "Generation Y Disconnect" issue in this comment, but I imagine someone will chime in with that....

The main point I wanted to make here is that I feel that younger students are completely overlooked in the recommendations quoted above.

Now, bear in mind that I'm not an aerospace engineer; my background is in media, and not space. But I did happen to go to a school where the vast majority of students entered already knowing that they wanted to do science and math and engineering. How did they get there?

Most of the top-tier universities already have fantastic research programs for undergrads and grads that get them actively involved in real research. We need look no further than one of the Google Lunar X PRIZE teams, Astrobotic, to see this in action.

But where are the high school students? Middle school? Elementary? Don't forget: the STEM is at the bottom of the plant. Where are the roots? NASA has done some interesting work getting these kids involved online, but where are the classroom programs? Afterschool activities?

OK, perhaps I speak too generally (there have already been some interesting programs). But I do strongly feel that the only good way to build a strong engineering workforce is to get people involved from a very early age.